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Tech News 2Night 87 (Transcript)

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Tonight, how the NSA used Skype and Outlook in data collection, photos from inside an NSA intercept room, and Google must comply with the "right to be forgotten"
Tech News 2Night is Next!
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This is Tech News 2Night Episode 87, for Wednesday,May 14, 2014
I'm Sarah Lane, Let's get right to the Tech Feed!
Let's go back to July of last year when Glenn Greenwald published claims that a number of Microsoft services were designed to allow the NSA to “circumvent encryption”, such as web chat on Outlook.com, and that the company worked with the FBI to bring OneDrive - which was called SkyDrive back then - to be accessed by PRISM, even that government data collection from Skype was on the rise. Today, Greenwald has published a set of documents, some new, some not, but include four slides detailing the NSA’s relationship with Microsoft, as well as the company’s work with the FBI. This by the way coincides with the release of his book, "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the U. S. Surveillance State". Last July, Microsoft did respond to Greenwald's allegations, saying that it only complies with data requests when legally required to.
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Sony Pictures Entertainment has announced that it had acquired rights to Gleen Greenwald’s book, "No Place to Hide", for the producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, known for the James Bond films “Skyfall” and “Quantum of Solace,” both released under Sony and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The book had been making the Hollywood rounds since the fall. Edward Snowden remains in Russia, and is wanted by the authorities in the United States, where he faces criminal charges. Last month, he retained a Washington lawyer in hopes of reaching a plea deal with federal prosecutors.
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You know what else Glenn Greenwald’s book has? A National Security Agency document with details on how the agency’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercept servers, routers, and other network gear before they're shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance, and install covert implant firmware onto them. The document itself is a June 2010 internal newsletter article by the chief of the NSA’s Access and Target Development department and includes photos of NSA employees opening the shipping box for a Cisco router and installing beacon firmware with a “load station”. Yeesh.
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A source tells Reuters that Google has begun getting requests to remove objectionable personal information from its search results after the Court of Justice of the European Union, which affects the region's 500 citizens, ruled that subjects have the "right to be forgotten". The decision requires that Internet search services remove information deemed "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant," and failure to do so can result in fines. Reuters reports Google will need to hire an "army of removal experts" in each of the 28 European Union countries, even in countries where Google doesn't operate. Europeans can submit take-down requests directly to Google instead of local authorities or publishers under the ruling. And if any search engine chooses not to remove the link, a person can seek redress from the courts.
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Network traffic specialist Sandvine published a report out today that Snapchat is now the top third-party messaging app in North America by volume, and generates more traffic each day than competing services includeing WhatsApp. Video apps still dominate Sandvine’s North American top-10 list for network traffic both for fixed and mobile carriers, though Snapchat now offers text, picture, and video messaging. Facebook and Google have both been rumored in failed Snapchat acquisition attempts, and Techcrunch sources say Google offered up to $10 billion for the app.
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Ok, straight up rumor time! Microsoft is holding a Surface press event in New York City next week, that's not a rumor, but the company may indeed be announcing a new Surface tablet, and may have accidentally revealed that via a support article published yesterday that says a fresh update for Windows 8.1 "adds support to the Surface Pro 3 camera."
9to5Mac reports that Apple is not only set to release a new, larger iPhone later this year, but could also scale the next iPhone display with a pixel-tripling (3X) mode.... which means Apple may be tripling the “base resolution” (568 x 320) of the iPhone screen in both directions, and that the iPhone screen resolution will be scaled with an increase of 150% from the current 2X resolution of 1136 x 640. In other words, Apple is testing a 1704 x 960 resolution display for the iPhone 6, which would keep the same 16:9 aspect ratio as the iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, and iPhone 5c.
Coming up, you won't believe what kind of computer George R.R. Martin uses to write 'Game of Thrones'.
But first...
[Segment #2]
Bridget Carey Senior Editor CNET
Microsoft is making a few changes to the Xbox One.
-First tell us why Microsoft is removing Kinect?
-They are also cutting the Gold Live requirement.
-Are they offering a refund to folks who already have Gold Live?
-Are they removing any apps or content?
-Why do you think they are cutting these options?
/Thanks
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Finally, the author behind Game of Thrones, George RR Martin, was a guest on Conan O'brien last night, and admitted he uses a "DOS machine" running WordStar 4.0 to write the books. WordStar is a processing system released in the '70s from MicroPro. Martin explained "I actually like it, it does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do anything else,...I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key."
Before we go, a calendar item - Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen announced plans to return Flappy Bird to the App Store in August during an interview with CNBC.. According to Nguyen, the new version of Flappy Bird will be a multiplayer title that is "less addictive."
[good bye] That's it for this edition of Tech News 2Night.
Subscribe to this show at Twit.tv/tn2, and write us at tn2@twit.tv
Don't miss our morning news program, Tech News Today, tomorrow and every weekday at 10am Pacific, 1 pm Eastern. I'm Sarah Lane, thanks for watching.
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